


Love (and Consentacles) Actually

by innie



Category: To Whatever - Shaenon Garrity
Genre: Consentacles, M/M, Other, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-18 20:20:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16523960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: Ethan has a plan: get some.





	Love (and Consentacles) Actually

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liviania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liviania/gifts).



> Enthusiastically consensual tentacle sex in a five-dimensional world! Good times, good times.
> 
> (My thanks to Isis for the excellent beta!)

It's taken _weeks_ to make sure Whatever feels safe after the Willem shitshow, which meant a whole lot of apologies, choking down the gelatinous ovoid things that kept appearing in the fridge, and some hesitant tentacle-petting, but Ethan's pretty sure Ev finally trusts him again.

For one thing, Ev's been sitting next to him on the loveseat (though it wasn't really designed with Ev's particular shape in mind) and making his own topographic impression in the cushion next to the one that has Ethan's spectacular butt-groove. For another, sitting pressed up against each other, movie after movie and sitcom after sitcom, has given Ethan a crash course in Ev's body language, from the way those tentacles like to card through his hair to how much like a happy sigh Ev's full-body rolls seem. Plus he's learned by now to keep the chenille throw on his side and leave Nana's afghan on Ev's, because Ev likes to poke his tentacles through the gaps in the design; Ethan would have thought that it would seem too much like a net, but Ev clearly has no problem with it, and who is Ethan to argue?

He just hopes all of Ev's little scent-markings of the apartment and the hair-pettings mean what he wants them to mean. It would be great if Ev were just as desperate for him as he is for Ev. He's a librarian, so misreading the clues would be professionally embarrassing as well as personally devastating, but he's also braver than he knew, or at least he was when Ev was on the line. Time to roll the dice.

There are no blankets tonight – he's got a romcom (88% fresh!) all cued up and a plan to _get some_. Step one: blankets tucked away on the bookshelf, so they'll have to use each other for warmth; step two: romcom with enough humor to make Ev ripple with mirth and enough sexytimes to put ideas in his giant noggin; step three: get some.

When Ev very casually drapes one tentacle around his waist during a lull in the movie – the main couple is having the same argument for approximately the eleventh time, it's seriously a drag – Ethan nearly laughs, because it's such a yawn-and-cop-a-feel move. He's glad he can stifle the laughter, because he's not about to dislodge Ev's warm tentacle from its place. He rests his head against Ev's, liking how softly solid it is, how big and warm.

This, _this_ is what he wanted from Richard, from Willem – Christ, now he's thinking again of just how profound an asshole Willem really was. That note alone was proof enough, and the fact that Willem described his feeling for him as "avuncular" was really fucking shitty, both because it was clear Willem had no clue what the actual definition of the word was – Ethan was willing to bet his paycheck that Microsoft Word had suggested it and Willem had pompously acceded – and because it was just one more shred of evidence that Willem intended that note for publication. Now that he thinks about it, Ethan's surprised he got the original and not a photocopy. But _avuncular_ , really? If Willem liked to tie up _his uncle_ and nibble along his neck, then that particular ex had more problems than could be laid at Ethan's – and Ev's – door.

Ev slides one of his slimmer tentacles around Ethan's neck, balancing the weight of it on the slope of his shoulder and leaving its tip free to thwack a cool and perfectly dry suction cup over his ear. Douglas Adams evidently knew exactly what the fuck he was talking about with the Babel fish, except Ev's got the over-the-ear option rather than the earbud-style insertion type of translation thing going on. {relax, baby, you feel like you're trying to make quills pop out of your innards-covering. your skin. you don't have the anatomy to do that.}

Ethan, at that moment, deeply regrets showing Ev any bit of pop culture that uses the term "baby" as a romantic endearment, because his heart races just a little bit to hear it even while he, intellectually speaking, deplores how impersonal and infantilizing a term it is. "No, I'm not," he mutters, face going warm as soon as he realizes just how effectively he's demonstrating his plummeting maturity level.

{sure, baby. you also don't have the poisons in your system to make quills worthwhile.}

Ev is smug as shit, and Ethan fumes for a minute – the stupid couple in the terrible movie is on iteration _twelve_ of their argument – before considering how to get the night back on track. Vertebra by vertebra, he relaxes his body and cuddles in close. Ev's tentacles tighten a little around him as if they're gratified not to be slapped away. "Why don't you tell me what else you've noticed about my anatomy, hmm?" he says, channeling some screen siren as hard as he possibly can, not that any black-and-white dame rocked the casual scruff as well as he does.

{you're soft. and squishy. but strangely unable to squeeze into only two dimensions.} Ev's nimblest tentacles start plucking at his clothes and easing beneath them. {and while all of you two-legs choose additional skins to cover your awkwardness, yours are especially displeasing.}

Ethan's aware that he's pathologically polite and has a tendency to ascribe the most charitable meanings possible to others' words; it's why his mother calls him "Mr. Sunshine" and worried so much about sending him off to live in the big city. He's just going to take it as read that Ev hates his clothes not because of his fashion sense but because they prevent him from enjoying instant access to Ethan's soft, supple – he moisturizes like nobody's business – skin. It's romantic, or at least could be construed that way.

"I can work with that," Ethan murmurs, leaning toward Ev, who's started putting out a sort of apple-scented mist, though Ethan can't see any orifices and Ev's skin is not visibly porous.

{no, baby.} Ev sounds amused. {we'll do all the work.}

Shit, that was clearly _we_ and not _I_. "Sorry I counted wrong," he says, slurring a little because his tongue is suddenly thick in his mouth and clumsy against the rubberiness of Ev's skin. Innards-covering, if Ev prefers.

{don't say sorry ever again, baby. not to us.} It's a purr in Ethan's ear that makes him want to wrap his legs around Ev's big head and grind. So he does, enjoying the hell out of it. Ev turns into a blur of limbs, pulling at his clothes and setting him back down on the parquet floor.

Score one for tentacles, because Ethan's never been undressed faster in his life. Score another for that pheromone, because Ethan's swaying like an underwater plant on his own two feet, and loving every second of it.

On his bare skin, the tentacles feel more _intentional_ than they have on his clothes or even in his hair. Or maybe they're just making every bit of his body they touch into a brand-new erogenous zone. When tentacles touch his thighs, the significance is overwhelming.

They cradle him like the horniest mosh pit of all time, and he relaxes into their embrace. "Mmmmm," he hums, feeling the vibrations of Ev's whirrs and chirps throughout his body. "Wait," he says, fumbling for the bamboo-like tentacle to clap the tip over his ear. "What're you saying?"

{no, nothing, baby.} 

"Don't call me baby, but tell me," he manages to say. That pheromone is seriously awesome, and how has he never realized that the smell of apples and the scent of seawater are so arousing together?

{why were you so quilly before?}

It's not like anything dramatic happens, like Ethan suddenly feeling ice-cold in Ev's embrace or having the waxy smell of the clown-faced cats' face-paint hang thick in the air. Ethan just doesn't want to go back to how he was feeling before, when now he's feeling so good and about to get some from Ev, who is the thing – are the things? – of his dreams.

"Just thinking of all the shit Willem pulled," he finally says, and the tentacles give him a comforting squeeze. "I'm really sorry about what he did – that was a real dick move."

{no,} is all he hears after a long silence, tentacles shifting so they're like a hammock. { _this_ is a dick move,} Ev says, and raises several of their more intimate-looking tentacles in a sort of wave as a thin, flexible one lifts Ethan's dick by means of the tenderest stroke from root to crown. Come just starts spurting right out, like the stroke drew it up through capillary action.

"Holy shit!"

{noooooope,} purrs Ev as they probe at Ethan's asshole. Ethan is _still_ coming and _still hard_. Ev's eyes are shining like torches and then Ethan can see _through_ them to find that they're in some five-dimensional world – not the face-cats one – where the pearly pink water supporting him smells like Pert Plus and the flowers floating by him and Ev look like they're origami made of cassette-tape ribbons rather than squares of colored paper.

"What?" he gasps, breathless even though he can breathe just fine. 

~Ethan,~ the water murmurs into his skin as it closes around him. It might not be his lungs doing the work, but given that he can breathe even when he's submerged in that thick pink water, Ethan doesn't kick up a fuss.

"Yeah?"

~Ethan,~ it says again, sing-songy. {Ambassador Slick likes you,} Ev says, taking over and sounding slightly petulant that anyone else dared to break in on their private time, {but we like you more.} 

And then Ethan is swallowed up, somehow, from head to waist, in a mouth he would have sworn Ev didn't have back on his world, and the rest of him is suspended in the air by the sentient network of Ev's busy tentacles. Ev's breath stirs through Ethan's hair even as the most delicate tentacles are caressing his legs, streaking up them like veins, and then pulling gently at the rim of his asshole, winding around his balls, and dipping tenderly into the slit of his cock, which is still spilling out come. He can feel his toes curling and he pushes his hands out against the pressurized air in Ev's cave of a mouth as if he can sculpt whatever oxygen substitute he's breathing in.

He feels like he's been milked completely dry, and also like he's been on the edge for an eternity. If he's caught in a bubble of every possibility happening at once, simply by virtue of being in a world that has an extra dimension on top of the fourth one, Time, he's ready to broadcast to the world – and his high-school physics teacher in particular – just how awesome it is.

He can't see exactly what's happening to his lower half, though he _can_ see out of Ev's torchlight eyes, which are nowhere near as sharp as his own. Ethan imagines taking Ev to an ophthalmologist and getting Ev fitted with glasses – maybe some nice bone-rimmed ones – but before he can get carried away with fantasies of domesticity extending past the walls of their apartment or the malleable border that they've crossed to come into this world, he can feel hundreds of delicate touches, each from a different tentacle tip, ranging in texture from raw silk to fern frond. First they touch his prostate, and then they take a drop of his come, the movements so rapid and precise that he pictures it like those designs made of thousands of carefully arranged dominoes, the ripple just the same and the exhilaration, too.

{ah. yes.} Ev exhales and Ethan is right side up again, bobbing like a cork in water that goes thin and clear around him. He looks around to find himself naked and flaccid in his own shower, Ev laid out along the bottom of the tub and keeping him aloft just high enough that his toes barely brush Ev's gleaming skin. {you are our favorite.}

Ethan grins down at Ev. He feels spectacular. "You're my favorite too."

{what was that? did you say 'round two'?}

"That wasn't, like, every round ever, all at once?"

{oh.} Ev sounds like they're nanoseconds from making themselves two-dimensional and slipping down the drain.

"Oh no you don't. I meant that in the best way."

{there's a best way?} Damn, that's seriously snippy. Did they not get off?

"Come on, what do you need?" Ethan asks, turning the shower off and doing a cursory wipe-down with his thin yellow towel before knotting it around his waist. He's going to splurge and buy two really nice thick ones with his next paycheck.

Ev huffs dramatically and pulls the Babel tentacle away from Ethan's ear. Ethan can hear that they left Netflix running and he goes out to the living room to turn the tv off. Ev stomps like a tentacled runway model over to the loveseat, snags the afghan off the bookshelf with a limb as fast as a frog's fly-catching tongue, pokes their tentacles through the holes in the afghan, and draws all their limbs in until they're just one shiny round blob.

Ethan bends to press a kiss to their gleaming skin. "You really are my favorite. My favorite ever."

One of Ev's eyes opens just enough to peek up at him, shining gold and unbearably precious. That fragile tentacle cups his ear again. {round two now?}

Ethan laughs, loving Ev like crazy. "Insatiable," he says even as two more tentacles wind around his wrists to bind him and bring him close. He wraps his legs around Ev's head, and Ev plucks the towel away. "I do have work in the morning."

{or you could get to work right now.}

How Ethan got lucky enough to find a dirty-talking sex-fiend of an Elder City denizen to wring him out from head to toe he has no idea, but he's going to roll with it. "Yeah, why don't I do that," he says, low and loving, and the bliss begins to build.


End file.
